Holcombe Rucker Park

This site was once occupied by the 8th Avenue Railroad Company, which opened in 1852, ran from Lower Manhattan to 51st Street and 8th Avenue, and expanded here in the late 1800s; part of its original route is now followed by the M10 bus line. The park opened as the PS 156 Playground in 1956 as a Jointly Operated Playground under a 1938 arrangement in which the Board of Education provided land next to schools for playgrounds built and maintained by the Parks Department for school use by day and public use on evenings and weekends, and although the school closed in 1981 because of declining student population, the playground remained. In 1974, it was renamed Holcombe Rucker Park at the request of Rucker's protégés, honoring Holcombe Rucker (1926-1965), a Manhattan-born Playground Director for NYC Parks who worked at various Harlem parks from 1948 and 1964, founded influential basketball tournaments here, mentored generations of players, promoted scholarship as well as athletics under the motto "each one, teach one," earned a degree from the City College of New York in 1962, taught English at Frederick Douglass J.H.S. 139, and died at age 38 from complications of cancer. By the 1950s, his Rucker Tournament had produced some 700 college athletic scholarships, and over time leading amateur players competed here alongside professionals including Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. After his death, Bob McCullogh and Fred Crawford created the summer Rucker Pro League, preceded by the amateur "Each One Teach One" tournament; in the late 1960s and 70s the league reached its height with players including Julius "Dr. J" Erving, Willis Reed, Joe "The Destroyer" Hammond, Herman "Helicopter" Knowling, and Earl "The Goat" Manigault, before returning to its amateur roots by the early 1980s as professionals became less active. Today Rucker's original tournament is played at Colonel Charles Young Playground at 145th Street near the Harlem River, while for more than 50 years the Each One Teach One summer league has remained here, and the Entertainers Basketball Classic, founded by Gregory Marius and bringing together top high school, college, and professional players, moved to this court in 1985; the basketball tournaments at Greg Marius Court have also been the subject of three films: Above the Rim, On Hallowed Ground, and The Real: Rucker Pro Legends and Fathers of the Sport.

New York, New York · United States